Some 1.65 million people were left snowblind and frostbitten, 500,000 livestock and wildlife dead and 3.1 million others on verge of starvation as a result of severe snow disasters in Tibetan prefectures of Qinghai Province, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency Mar 1.

The report said the province was in grip of low temperature since Oct’07, which plunged to -36.3 degrees centigrade in Jan’08. It said that in Yushu, Guoluo (Tibetan: Golog) and Huangnan (Tibetan: Malho) Tibet Autonomous Prefectures, most of the grassland was covered by snow, usually 16 to 32 cm thick, causing great losses to local animal husbandry.

The afflicted prefectures were reported to cause 130,000 people to run out of fuels, 350,000 people in need of food and 110,000 others short of warm clothes or quilts, the provincial government was cited as saying.

The province’s immediate task was reported to be to evacuate 11,000 people of 2,000 herdsmen-households because the local conditions were said to be not fit for people to live there any longer.